


Flaws

by Slothbeans



Series: Pepperony Week 2019 [4]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, F/M, Hurt Tony Stark, Pepperony - Freeform, Pepperony Week, Pepperony Week 2019, Pregnancy, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, Unplanned Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-07
Updated: 2019-08-07
Packaged: 2020-08-11 11:24:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20152813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Slothbeans/pseuds/Slothbeans
Summary: Pepper isn't perfect, and she knows Tony isn't either. They both have flaws. That's what makes them human beings, but maybe, their biggest flaws of all can create something greater. She just needs him to come home. She can't do this without his love.OR Pepper finds out she's pregnant and waits for Tony to return from space.





	Flaws

**Author's Note:**

> Titled Inspiration: Flaws by Bastille  
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1E36WU9Wzf4

Tony was right. How was Tony Stark always so god damn right?

That dream - or the vision maybe - was right all along. It was always right. Even with her fiance millions of miles away in space, he had predicted her condition. He had known she was pregnant.

_ "Look, you know how you're having a dream, and in the dream you gotta pee?" _

_ "Yeah." _

_ "Okay, and then you're like, "Oh my god, there's no bathroom, what am I gonna do?" "Oh! Someone's watching." "I'm gonna go in my pants."" _

_ "Right. And then you wake up, and in real life, you actually have to pee." _

_ "Yes." _

_ "Yeah. Everybody has that." _

_ "Right! That's the point I'm trying to make. Apropos of that, last night, I dreamt, we had a kid. So real." _

Pepper sits on the edge of the toilet in complete and total utter shock, with the dirty pee strained stick in her hand. There's two more sitting on the side of the sink, also testing as positive, but the woman just needed to be sure. There's no denying the two blue lines on every single stick that she's tested so far and her unusually late period, even if she could forget the morning sickness.

A baby is growing inside of her.

Birth control fails sometimes. She understands that more than anyone, with the way she was raised in a foster home as an accidental pregnancy herself. It's a risk most people are willing to take. A chance that she takes every single time she makes love with her fiance, but not something she ever really prepared for. She could never imagine herself raising a child with her hero complex of a husband.

To put it mildly, she's freaking the fuck out. It isn't that Pepper can't financially support the child - she has quite the nest egg squirmed away from her years as CEO. And she knows she could love a child. She respects her parent's choice, but she could never give up a baby to an unknown future as they had with her. She just wishes that she wasn't doing it alone.

This isn't the world little Morgan deserves. The little girl, named after her crazy uncle at Tony's insane suggestion, was created in a world of no terrors but would be born to a world with a half population. This isn't the world she ever envisioned herself having a child in. Not without Tony. Not alone.

A world broke by a monster she'd done nothing to stop. A beast that every single hero she'd known had battled - including her fiance Tony and possible future stepson Peter - and lost to. A monster who completely decimated the world and killed everyone she loved, including Happy Hogan and May Parker.

Pepper hadn't been there for the final battle - she had no powers or iron of her own - but she had seen the devastation that monster had caused. She'd watched as dozens of people around her were dusted, piecing away into the universe as their beings resolved into nothingness. Some had screamed, some had fought, some had gone peacefully. But every single one had been terrifying and painful to watch.

Had Tony struggled in the same way - floated into unwilling dust? Or worse, had be been ripped apart limb by limb by Thanos in a painful, angry blur. She can't even imagine which one would be worse.

Tears pour down her face as pain rips through her chest once more. She knows the stress is bad for the baby. She needs to remain calm so that it can thrive, but that's become so difficult in a world torn apart by failure. How can she bear a baby into a world like this?

Pepper's hands instinctively move towards her stomach. There's no bump there yet. The baby has barely been developed, only a tiny bundle of cells growing within her, but she finds herself loving it more than anything in her life right now. It's her everything. 

Because in only seven months time, that bundle of cells will grow into so much more. Something real. Something that will keep her close to Tony forever - whether he's dead or alive right now. She can't really focus on that fact because she's going to have a baby. Tony Stark's baby.

This baby will be half Tony Stark and half Pepper Potts. Even if the mother has to raise this baby alone, she'll be sure to support every bit of this child and mold him into the man her fiance was. This baby will lead to a new era in the world, with the best qualities of both parents.

Intelligent. Witty. Caring. Sacrificial. Beyond kind. And heroic.

Her baby will be half of her and half of Tony Stark, and somehow, it would be the best of both of them.

-

Things change when Tony Stark returns home.

The fire within him is broken. It's dulled to a pile of barely smoldering ashes that is unrecognizable from the man he once was. There's so little fight in him after the things he's seen, the disaster he's witnessed on Titan. 

He fought impossibly hard to save everyone - to keep the people he loves safe and sound. He gives more than he ever has before, with the looming threat of disaster deep in the back of his mind, but he somehow lost just as painfully. He failed. Everyone he loves is dead.

And now all his children are gone. They've been dusted - some of them even broken in Tony's shaking arms.

His protege ripped away from his bloodied hands, desperately shaking and apologizing as every molecule of him breaks into dust and floats into nothingness. There's a pain residing deep within Tony from the traumatic loss, even greater than the usual dull ache of his body. He's already had enough pain to last him a lifetime. The burden of losing Peter Parker is too much for him to take.

Tony will never forget the way the boy shakes in pain as he fights the effects of the snap. Whether it's the warning brought on by the young hero's Peter Tingle, or the way his body tries to fight against the damage with his enhanced healing, Peter does not go as easily as the other heroes. Where the others had a few seconds of realization before their dustings, the kid's dusting seems to last a whole half a minute. And he'd spent it in complete utter torture.

The man's first adoptive son Harley, though only his son in spirit, hadn't done much better. While Tony hadn't seen him dusted after the chaos that was Titan, he could only hope it wasn't as painful as Peter's demise. He prays the entire ride home that Harley is safe.

He returns home with the hope that at least one of his sons will be okay. That's the furthest from the truth, though. When he returns to Earth, he calls time and time again, even if he knows it's hopeless after the boy's first missed call. Harley never refuses a call from Ironman, even if he's grown a bit of an attitude over the years.

Eventually, Harley's mother does pick up the phone, broken and crying as she's come home to an empty house, the dusting of her coworkers recently fresh in her mind. She immediately knows what had happened to her son, but was doing her best to hold it together for her younger daughter. Tony can only comfort her over the phone for so long before he has to hang up and cry himself to sleep as well.

And now Tony Stark is broken. Truly devastated in his loss.

He's lost every bit of his family. Taken away by circumstances outside of his control.

The Avengers - lost to him through disagreements and hatred.

Harley Keener - an adoptive son that's already been through Hell and back.

And now, the world's youngest Avenger, a brave little hero known to the world as Spider-Man. A kid that certainly deserved better than Tony's failure.

-

Tony Stark is wrong. That happens from time to time.

Lost in his grief for his boys and the world around him, he forgets that he still has one bit of family left. His fiance is waiting for him as he returns from space, desperately panicked that she's lost him forever. 

She's relieved to see him safe and sound, or at least as safe as he could be before passing out from exhaustion mid-meeting. His anger and exhaustion bring him to a boiling point towards the other Avengers, and Pepper has to force him to stay bedridden while he heals afterward.

It takes three weeks for Tony to be returned to Earth's atmosphere, and only on some rare fluke of a hero passing by his way. Three long weeks that Pepper spends worrying and trying to stay calm for the sake of the baby growing within her body. She can't risk damaging the only piece of her fiance left.

It's the biggest relief when her fiance is returned home to her, even with the amount of damage and starvation that he's suffered through. The father to her baby is home. They can be a real family. Maybe even get married if there areenough guests left for a proper ceremony.

But Tony only goes through grief in the first few days of his return. More than any other single person could ever survive, yet Tony seems to have a gift for surviving the impossible. He always seems to find a way to go through the most pain, but somehow end up stronger because of it.

There's no way Pepper can break the news to him in such a state. The woman's terrified of what he'll think and how he'll react. The father's just lost the children he loves so much. He might not have any hope left for the child growing within her. And Pepper's worried that he might see the child growing within her womb as an unworthy replacement. 

But there's also a necessity growing within Pepper. She needs to tell someone soon. She needs proper prenatal care, and with the disaster of the world around them, finding a good doctor is nearly impossible. She needs Tony's connections to pay for a proper gynecologist.

She cannot bear to lose her child right now. Not in a time like this. Not with her fiance so broken and afraid.

"Tony, can we talk for a few moments?"

She sees the struggle in the man as he pulls himself away from his machines. He's been working on these plans nonstop over the last few days, trying to find a solution without the aid of his other team members. They won't be any help, and there's still a large amount of guilt and desperation within the man to fix his failures and bring his boys back. He needs to do anything he can to bring them back.

Tony Stark is a hero. He can't ignore who he is.

"Any luck?" Pepper asks as the man takes a seat across from her.

"You know there isn't. Is that all? Because I should really be getting back to work."

"No. I'm sorry. I have something else I need to talk to you about..."

"I'm pregnant."

The words seem to shake something out of her fiance - bring back the sparkle in the back of Tony's eyes. She's missed it so long. It's overwhelming to see him looking so alive like this after so long. 

Tony approaches Pepper slowly as he places his hands on her barely grown belly. He's listening to something even she can't hear, possibly his own toxic thoughts that have been bouncing around his head ever since he returned. Perhaps a near-silent heartbeat that's only bouncing around in his own mind.

"I'm not alone?" the man whispers.

"You were never alone, Tony. I'm here for you. I promise I'll always be here for you. And we'll figure this out together."

"We're having a baby?"

"That's what pregnant means," she says with a chuckle, little crystal tears forming in the corner of Pepper's eyes. "Little baby Morgan, just like you predicted. Just like in your dreams. You were right."

"I'm always right," Tony says with a chuckle. It's the best sound Pepper's heard all week.

**Author's Note:**

> You can also follow me on tumblr too. My username is [@slothbeans](https://slothbeans.tumblr.com/)
> 
> If you like the story, please leave a review. It really helps me stay motivated, especially since this is my passion project and a major undertaking for me. <3


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